Plaything by Karl Koweski
copyright 2002.

Clara arrived four to six weeks later, lovingly packaged in a four foot by two and a half foot plywood crate.

Her blonde hair will be shoulder length, straight. Her eyes blue. She will have only a slight tuft if pubic hair. Her breasts will be formidable as the breasts of the last fifteen women have been. Her immaculate body will be skin color five.

Jay Wilkes knew this before he picked up the crowbar. Just as he knew her luscious body would be protected from harm by a congregation of pink styrofoam peanuts. Peanuts he always believed resembled maggots bloated on a dead clown's cotton candy body.

A momentary flashback to childhood: Rummaging through dumpsters and alleys for anything salvageable. Old television sets, record players, toys, discarded nudie magazines. He enjoyed gathering styrofoam and lighting fire to the pile, watching transfixed the thick greasy smoke curling and spiraling away from the blackening husks.

"Jay?" A tiny voice spoke within the crate.

He stood perfectly still, his three hundred pounds of bad skin and loose flesh dominated his cramped studio apartment. He was naked as he preferred to be when welcoming a new girlfriend into his home.

"Yes?" He pressed an ear against the crate and listened to Clara's ragged breathing. His penis stiffened beneath the grotesque bulk of his belly. She was frightened. Surely her trip had been long and harrowing. The minions of the UPS were bastards, every last one of them, bastards with no idea how to treat a lady.

Jay knew how to handle his women. His father had taught him young.

"Jay, please, I'm so scared."

"It's s'okay, now, Princess," Jay lisped. "You're home, now."

His obscenely full lips pulled back across his doughy face in a leering smile. Everything about him was asymmetrical and about three sizes too large except for his penis which would have been at home swinging between the legs of a cricket.

In seconds, he was a flurry of movement, gobs of chest flesh undulating, beginning at his shoulder blades and swooping down beneath both arms before jutting off his chest to such a degree that a bra would not have been a bad idea.

He conquered the crate in five deft moves of the crowbar. The glut of styrofoam peanuts cascaded across the carpet revealing Clara in all her prefabricated glory.

She arrived with her arms crossed beneath her firm breasts, legs spread with her knees bent back leaving her unmentionables barely obscured by the pink fishnet teddie Jay had special ordered on the internet through T&A Replicants Inc.

Five hundred and sixty dollars including shipping and handling, though he hoped there wasn't too much handling occurring between T&A Headquarters out there in sunny California and his home in suckass Akron, Ohio. He liked to assume all women received were virgins.

As was always the case, the bitch shut her mouth the moment Jay withdrew her from the crate. He set her down on his Salvation Army sofa, sitting down beside her. The silence lasted ten minutes.

"I know it's not much here," Jay began, staring into her blue eyes. "I'm not a rich man. I never will be a rich man, though I often get some overtime in at the factory. It's not enough to give you what you deserve." His pudgy hand caressed her latex thigh. "I understand if you're disappointed. I know I may not look like much of a man." His hand slid between her legs, dipping a finger into her tight box. "But I'm gonna treat you good, baby." His fish lips pressed against her sultry oxblood lips. "Provided you do what I say."

That first night, Jay Wilkes allowed Clara to sleep unmolested on the couch and recuperate from her hellish trip. Rather than work himself up, downloading porn off the net, he curled up on the floor near the television he had found dumped in an alley off Cameron Street.

Jay dreamt of bad things. The morning his father found his tattered collection of Hustlers and Penthouses likberated from area garbage cans. The two hours standing in the corner with a clothes pin attached to his penis. Trying not to whimper.

None of this mattered when Jay awoke. Clara was still asleep with the comforter pulled up to her chin. He stood over her prone body, Marlboro light looking like a toothpick in his mouth.

She was his. She belonged to him, moreso than the toaster and the television, the computer and the hacksaw. He had created her. From the size of her areoles down to the shade of pink of her pussy lips. She would soon learn who was the master and who was the slave. He momentarily considered urinated on her but quickly pushed the thought out of his mind.

First there was work. Eight hours worth of suffering, stemming not so much from operating the cut-off machine but from dealing with loudmouth co-workers who refused to believe Jay when he told them he lost his virginity to two women at once (true in a sense, Theresa and Jody were his first order placed through T&A) or that he could fuck for a straight four and a half hours (maybe a bit of an exaggeration, though it often seemed much longer).

He was beginning to learn to keep his mouth shut during break, but the damage had already been done. During break, at his machine, while he waddled down the aisle looking for a forklift, everyone had a wisecrack, even the weasel of a maintenance man who ordinarily wouldn't have said shit if he had a mouthful had a smartass comment at the ready when Jay approached.

Halfway into the shift, anticipation steadily intensifying along with an irrational anxiety that some faceless bastard was at that moment breaking into the apartment to have his way with Clara, Jay grabbed hold of the supervisor.

"How about letting me get out of here, Lee. I ain't feeling so great. Probably something I ate last night.

"You wanna go home?"

"Yeah, please."

"You telling me you can fuck for four and a half hours but you can't work no more than four?"

This was not the first time he had heard this remark or a variation there of. He had yet to figure out a suitable reply, though.

Returning to his apartment after four hours away, Jay found Clara bent over the sofa with her bare ass propped up in the air. Her legs were slightly spread so the first thing he'd see walking through the door were her bubblegum pink pussy lips hanging down like mudflaps.

"I couldn't wait to get home to you, baby," he said.

Silence.

"I like it when you greet me like this."

Nothing.

Undressing was like collapsing a two man tent. He wobbled on fallen arches to the foot of the sofa. He couldn't take his eyes of her perfect body. Her unmarred face was turned away, and he took the opportunity to really check her out. Beautiful. The way her breasts hung heavy off her pettite, elven frame. Firm and supple. There were no scars criss-crossing her back. No moles or acne scars. Perfect. Beyond real, almost.

He set his meaty hand on the small of her back, trailing it down the curve of her ass. "I love you, Clara. You may not believe a word of what I'm telling you, but that's all right. I love you more than I could ever put into words. More than has ever been put into words by anyone."

He stared at the back of her head, willing her to speak. To tell him his love was reciprocated. She refused to speak, to acknowledge him in any way. Jay could feel his face burning red. "Talk to me," he hissed.

Another ten seconds and he was on his feet using breathing exercises to control his fury. Counting to ten forward and back. When he felt able to function without breaking anything, he walked to the stereo and hit play, his Bryan Adams' CD primed to go.

"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to, Clara. We'll just let our actions do the talking for us."

That night their lovemaking began tenderly. Her body was so pliable, she could hold most any position he was physically able to undertake. Not very many for Jay. The sofa, though reinforced with several 2x4s retrieved from area dumps, threatened to give out whenever he moved to vehemently.

She never spoke. Never returned any promises of devotion. And while they did not fuck for four and a half hours, during the course of the night, he did climax three times, switching orifices after each orgasm, becoming more and more aggressive as the night wore on.

Afterward, Clara laid on the floor of the living room section. Her back toward Jay who continued to wheeze from coital exertion. His chest lolled, rising and falling with such vehemence that he appeared to be a machine on the verge of overloading.

Finally, he lit a Marlboro light. Savoring the taste. He placed the cigarette in the corner of Clara's mouth where it proceeded to fall out, burning a hole in the carpet.

"Goddam it, you stupid bitch. There goes my security deposit."

He punched her across the face knocking out a load of sperm from her gaping mouth. Another punch rolled her over, face to the floor, her glazed ass bent toward the ceiling.

Jay stood above her. Clenching his fists, gnashing his yellowed teeth.

"Clara."

Nothing.

"Don't you fucking ignore me. Slut."

Ass in the air, face to the floor. Supplication.

"Clara."

Silence.

"Clara, I'm sorry." He kneeled beside her. "Really, I am. I want this to be different with you."

The next day he returned from a full shift at the factory with a twenty dollar charm necklace he picked up on the way home. An apology gift. She still wasn't speaking to him.

"Clara, I got something for you."

The apartment at a glance.

"Jesus fucking Christ."

Clara sat on the sofa, oblivious, her eyes glued to the soap opera playing out on the television screen.

The apartment reeked of stale spunk and rotting food. Fucking rats lived cleaner than this. The ashtrays brimmed with cigarette butts. The sinkful of unwashed dishes threatened to spill over. There was an inch of dust coating every surface. What the fuck was a sock doing dangling off the ceiling fan? Did she not do a damn thing while I was busting my ass?

Even worse. A pair of skivies near the coffee table. They looked a good ten sizes too small for Jay.

Panic.

"Whose underwear are those?"

She wouldn't take her eyes off the t.v.

"Bitch, I asked you whose fucking drawers those are."

He charged across the miniscule room, leaping onto her solar plexus. She wouldn't even gratify him with a scream.

Mindlessly he flailed out, battering her with a fusillade of fists. When he stopped she was sprawled out with her upper torso wedged beneath the coffee table, her muffin ass once again raised in the air. He kicked her. He waited to catch his breath, then flipped the coffee table over.

He stomped her spine a couple times then sat down and lit a Marlboro light. After smoking it down to the filter, he stubbed it out on her left ass cheek. He lit another and extinguished this one on her right cheek.

"Things are gonna change 'round here," Jay huffed. "You're gonna learn to respect me, bitch."

The next day, Jay did not return bearing electroplated gifts from K-Mart. She was beyond gratuity. He had given up trying to reach her.

Now she hung from hooks in the ceiling. Her body was a minefield of cigarette burns. Trenches created by the frenzied slashes of a straight razor snaked across her torso. Her eyes had been knocked out of her head and her mouth ripped open to comical proportions. Her had removed her foam rubber pussy lips and ate them like gummy bears. Her hair was caked down with sperm and excrement.

The guys at work had been especially brutal with their haraguing today, and Jay was in no mood to play around in his domain. Without a word he pulled out his pain kit from beneath the sofa. He withdrew a hacksaw from its varied contents. He set to work removing her left arm.

Later that night, plopped down in front of his computer, he surveyed the cornucopia of features available to him from T&A Replicants Inc. He already had the list committed to memory.

"I think I'll go with a red head this time," he spoke to no one in particular.

Another four to six weeks.

Jay wondered if he could wait that long.

++++

bio: Karl Koweski is the lead singer/banjo player of a disco/punk/country band called The Screaming Shits. When he's not touring the local factories, he can be found in his house trailer on top of the second highest mountain in Alabama. His work has been published throughout the small press and internet. His first collection of short stories, Playthings, is available online at Amazon.com and Powells.com